I didn't say the something big was the R1 release. Just that we're up to something if we suddenly go quiet and smile a lot.
As for the R1 release date, we're not close yet. By that I don't mean we're years away, but you shouldn't expect it as a Christmas present or something like that.
While some projects believe in keeping the fans in the dark about how long they'll have to wait, acting like they'll be out any second, I'd rather Diaspora was open about it. We don't give a release date because until a week or two beforehand we honestly won't know. What we can do is tell you what we have done and what remains to be done so that you can see the progress for yourselves. There are several stages that we have to go through in order to make the game.
1) We have to make placeholders for all the stuff we need
2) We have to make missions using those placeholders while the art team turn them into the final version
3) We have to get all the missions polished, bug tested and voice acted
Only once we've done that can we release and right now we're mostly at stage 2 with some minor stage 1 things needed. So when you start hearing me say that stuff from stage 3 is done, then you'll know we'll be releasing soon.